by L. J. Smith
Meredith sat as if in a trance for a moment, then grimaced and put the sphere down.
“What?” demanded Elena.
Meredith shook her head. She wore a delicate expression of distaste.
“What?” Elena almost yelled. Then as Meredith put the star ball by her feet, Elena lunged at it. She clapped it to her own temple and immediately was dressed in black leather from head to toe. There were two broad, square men in front of her, without a lot of muscle tone. And she could see all of their musculature because they were stark naked except for rags such as beggars wore. But they weren’t beggars—they looked well-fed and oily and it was clearly an act when one of them groveled, “We have trespassed. We beg your forgiveness, O master!”
Elena was reaching to take the sphere off her temple (they stuck gently, if you put a little pressure there) and saying, “Why don’t they use the space for something else?”
Something else was immediately all around her. A girl, in poor clothing, but not sacking. She looked terrified. Elena wondered if she were being controlled.
And Elena was the girl.
Pleasedon’tletitgetmepleasedon’tletitgetme—
Let what get you? Elena asked, but it was like watching a movie or book character while they were going into a lonely house in a howling storm and the music had turned eerie. The Elena who was walking in fear could not hear the Elena who was asking practical questions.
I don’t think I want to see how this one comes out, she decided. She put the star ball back at Meredith’s feet.
“Do we have three sacks?”
“Yes, ma’am, yes, ma’am; three sacks full.”
Oh. That didn’t work out very well. Elena was opening her mouth again, when Damon added quietly: “And one sack empty.”
“Really? We do? Then let’s all try to divide these. Anything—forbidden—goes in one sack. Weird stuff like Bonnie’s poetry reading goes into another. Any news of Stefan—or of us—goes in the third. And nice things, like summer days, go in the fourth,” Elena said.
“I think you are being optimistic, me,” Sage said. “To expect to find an orb with Stefan on it so quickly—”
“Everybody, hush!” Bonnie said frantically. “This is Shinichi and Damon talking him into it.”
Sage stiffened, as if taking a lightning bolt from the stormy sky, then he smiled. “Speak of the devil,” he murmured. Elena smiled at him and squeezed his hand before taking another ball.
“This one seems to be some kind of legal stuff. I don’t understand it. A slave must be taking it because I can see all of them.” Elena felt her facial muscles tighten with hatred at the sight—even in a sort of dream—of Shinichi, the kitsune who had done so much harm. His hair was black, except for an irregular fringe around the edges, which made it look as if it had been dipped in red-hot lava.
And then, of course, Misao. Shinichi’s sister—allegedly. This star ball must have been made by a slave, because she could see both of the twins and a lawyerly-looking man.
Misao, Elena thought. Delicate, deferential, demure…demonic. Her hair was the same as Shinichi’s, but it was held up and back in a ponytail. You could see the demonic part if she raised her eyes. They were effervescent, golden, laughing eyes, just like her brother’s; eyes that had never had a regret—except perhaps for not exacting enough revenge. They took no responsibility. They found anguish funny.
And then something odd happened. All three of the figures in the room suddenly turned around and looked straight at her. Straight at whoever had made the sphere, Elena corrected herself, but it still was disconcerting.
It was even more disconcerting when they continued to advance. Who am I? Elena thought, feeling half-frantic with anxiety. Then she tried something she had never done before, or seen or heard of being done. She carefully extended her Power into the Self around the orb. She was Werty, a sort of lawyer’s secretary. She/he took notes when important deals were done.
And Werty definitely didn’t like the way things were going right now. The two clients and his boss closing in on him like this, in a way they never had before.
Elena pulled herself out of the clerk and put the ball down to one side. She shivered, feeling as if she’d been plunged into ice-cold water.
And then the roof crashed in.
Bloddeuwedd.
Even with her crippled beak, the huge owl tore off quite a bit of the roof of the carriage.
Everyone was screaming and no one was giving much good advice. Saber and Damon had both damaged her: Saber by raising right off the three soft laps he was sitting on and lunging straight up for Bloddeuwedd’s feet. He had torn and shaken one before letting go to fall back into the carriage, where he almost slid off the back. Elena, Bonnie, and Meredith grabbed at whatever portions of canine anatomy they could reach, and hauled the huge animal into the backseat again.
“Scoot over! Give him his own seat,” wailed Bonnie, looking at the shreds of her pearl-colored dress where Saber had taken off and ripped right through the gauzy material. He’d left red welts in his path.
“Well,” Meredith said, “next time we’ll request steel petticoats. But I really hope there isn’t going to be a next time, anyway!”
Elena prayed fervently that she was right. Bloddeuwedd was skimming in from a lower angle now, undoubtedly hoping to snap off a few heads.
“Everybody grab wood. And spheres! Throw the spheres at her as she comes close to us.” Elena was hoping that the sight of star globes—Bloddeuwedd’s obsession—might slow her down.
At the same time Sage shouted, “Don’t waste the star balls! Throw anything else! Besides, we’re almost there. Hard left, then straightaway!”
The words gave Elena new hope. I have the key, she thought. The ring is the key. All I have to do now is get Stefan—and get all of us to the door with the keyhole. All in one building. I’m practically home.
The next sweep came in even lower. Bloddeuwedd, blind in one eye, with blood filling the other one, and her olfactory senses blocked by her own dried blood, was trying to ram the carriage and knock it over.
If she manages it, we’ll be dead, Elena thought. And any who’re still writhing like worms on the ground, she can pick off.
“DUCK!” She screamed the word both vocally and telepathically.
And then something like an airplane flew so close to her that she felt tufts of hair being pulled out, caught in its claws.
Elena heard a cry of pain from the front seat but didn’t raise her head to see what it was. And that was good, for while the carriage suddenly slammed to a halt, the next instant a whirling, screaming, bird of death came searing out on the same course. Now Elena needed all of her attention, all her faculties, to avoid this monster that was buzzing them even lower.
“The carriage, she is finished! Get out! Run!” Sage’s voice came rumbling to her.
“The horses,” screamed Elena.
“Finished! Get out, damn you!”
Elena had never heard Sage swear before. She dropped the subject.
Elena never knew how she and Meredith did get out, tumbling over each other, trying to help and only getting in each other’s way. Bonnie was already out, by virtue of the coach having hit a pole and sending her flying. Fortunately, it had sent her into a square of ugly but springy red clover, and she wasn’t seriously injured.
“Ahhh, my bracelet—no, there it is,” she cried, grabbing something glittering out of the clover. She cast a cautious look upward into the crimson night. “Now what do we do?”
“We run!” came Damon’s voice. He came around the wreckage of the corner where they had fallen in a heap. There was blood on his mouth, on the previously immaculate white at his throat. It reminded Elena of those people who drank cow’s blood as well as milk for nutrition. But Damon only drank from humans. He would never stoop to equine blood…
The horses will still be here and so will Bloddeuwedd, a harsh voice explained in her head. She would play with them; there would be pain. This way w
as quick. It was…a whim.
Elena reached for his hands, gasping. “Damon! I’m sorry!”
“GET OUT OF HERE,” Sage was roaring.
“We have to get to Stefan,” Elena said, and grabbed Bonnie with her other hand. “Help guide me, please. I can’t see the ring very well.” Meredith, she trusted, would get to the Shi no Shi building on her own resources.
And then there was a nightmare of running and flinching and false alarms by a shaken Bonnie. Twice the horror from above came skimming straight toward them only to crash just in front of them, or a little to the side, breaking wood and tile road alike, throwing up clouds of dust. Elena didn’t know about all owls, but Bloddeuwedd swooped down at an angle on her prey, then opened her wings and dropped at the last moment. Part of the worst thing about the giant owl was her silence. There was no rustling to warn them of where she might be. Something in her own feathers muffled the sound, so that they never knew when she was going to drop next.
In the end they had to crawl through all sorts of rubbish, going as fast as they could, holding wood, glass, anything sharp over their heads, as Bloddeuwedd made another pass.
And all the time Elena was trying to use her Power. It was not a Power she had used before, but she could feel its name shaping her lips. What she could not feel, could not force, was a connection between the words and the Power.
I’m useless as a heroine, she thought. I’m pathetic. They should have given these Powers to someone who already knew how to control such things. Or, no, they should have given them to someone and then given the someone a course on how to use them. Or—no—
“Elena!” Rubbish was flying in front of her, but then she was cutting left and somehow getting around it. And then she was on the ground and looking up at Damon, who had protected her with his body.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Come on!”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered and held out her right hand, with the ring on it, for him to take.
And then she doubled up, heaving with sobs. She could hear the flapping of Bloddeuwedd right above her.
40
Matt and Mrs. Flowers were in the bunker—the addition to the house that Mrs. Flowers’s uncle had put onto the back for woodwork and other hobbies. It had fallen into even more neglect than the rest of the house, being used as a storage space for things Mrs. Flowers didn’t know where else to put—such as Cousin Joe’s folding cot and that old sagging couch that didn’t match a stick of furniture inside anymore.
Now, at night, it was their haven. No child or adult from Fell’s Church had ever been invited inside. In fact, except for Mrs. Flowers, Stefan—who’d helped move large furniture into it—and now Matt, no one had even been in for as long as Mrs. Flowers could remember.
Matt clung to this. He had been, slowly but surely, reading through the material Meredith had researched and one precious excerpt had meant a lot to him and Mrs. Flowers. It was the reason they were able to sleep at night, when the voices came.
The kitsune is often thought to be a sort of cousin to Western vampires, seducing chosen men (as most fox spirits take on a female form) and feeding directly on their chi, or life spirit, without the intermediary of blood. Thus one may make a case that they are bound by similar rules to the vampire. For example, they cannot enter human dwellings without invitation…
And oh, the voices…
He was profoundly glad now that he’d taken Meredith and Bonnie’s advice and gone to Mrs. Flowers’s first before going home. The girls had convinced him he’d only be putting his parents in danger by facing up to the lynch mob that awaited him, ready to kill him for allegedly assaulting Caroline. Caroline seemed to have found him at the boardinghouse immediately, anyway, but she never brought any kind of mob with her. Matt thought that perhaps it was because that would have been useless.
He had no idea what might have happened if the voices had belonged to ex-friends long ago invited to his house while he was at home.
Tonight…
“Come on, Matt,” Caroline’s voice, lazy, slow, and seductive purred. It sounded as if she were lying down, speaking into the crack under the door. “Don’t be such a spoilsport. You know you have to come out sometime.”
“Let me talk to my mom.”
“I can’t, Matt. I told you before, she’s undergoing training.”
“To be like you?”
“It takes a lot of work to get to be like me, Matt.” Suddenly Caroline’s tone was not flirtatious any longer.
“I bet,” Matt muttered, and added, “You hurt my family and you’re going to be sorrier than you can imagine.”
“Oh, Matt! Come on, get real. Nobody is going to hurt anybody.”
Matt slowly opened his hands to look at what he had clenched between them. Meredith’s old revolver, filled with the bullets blessed by Obaasan.
“What is Elena’s middle name?” he asked—not loudly, even though there were the sounds of music and dancing in Mrs. Flowers’s backyard.
“Matt, what are you talking about? What are you doing in there, making a family tree?”
“I asked you a simple question, Care. You and Elena played since you were practically babies, right? So what is her middle name?”
A flurry of activity. When Caroline finally answered he could clearly hear the whispered coaching, as Stefan had heard so long ago, just a beat before her words.
“If all you’re interested in is playing games, Matthew Honeycutt, I’ll go find someone else to talk to.”
He could practically hear her flounce away.
But he felt like celebrating. He allowed himself a whole graham cracker and half a cup of Mrs. Flowers’s homemade apple juice. They never knew when they might be locked in here for good, with only the supplies they had, so whenever Matt went out of the bunker he brought back as many things as he could find that might be useful. A barbeque lighter and hairspray equaled a flame thrower. Jar after jar of Mrs. Flowers’s delicious preserves. Lapis rings in case the worst happened and they ended up with pointy teeth.
Mrs. Flowers turned in her sleep on the couch. “Who was that, Matt dear?” she asked.
“Nobody at all, Mrs. Flowers. You just go back to sleep.”
“I see,” Mrs. Flowers said in her sweet-old-lady voice. “Well, if nobody at all comes back you might ask her her own mother’s first name.”
“I see,” Matt said in his best imitation of her voice and then they both laughed. But underneath his laughter there was a lump in his throat. He had known Mrs. Forbes a long time, too. And he was scared, scared of the time that it would be Shinichi’s voice calling.
Then they were going to be in trouble for good.
“There it is,” shouted Sage.
“Elena!” screamed Meredith.
“Oh, God!” screamed Bonnie.
The next instant, Elena was thrown, and something landed on top of her. Dully, she heard a cry. But it was different from the others. It was a choking sound of pure pain as Bloddeuwedd’s beak thunked into something made of flesh. Me, Elena thought. But there was no pain.
Not…me?
There was a coughing sound above her.
“Elena—go—my shields—won’t hold—”
“Damon! We’ll go together!”
Hurts…
It was just the shadow of a telepathic whisper and Elena knew Damon didn’t think she’d heard it. But she was circling her Power faster and faster, done with deception, caring only about getting those she loved out of danger.
I’ll find a way, she told Damon. I’ll carry you. Fireman’s lift.
He laughed at that, giving Elena some hope that he wasn’t dying. Now Elena wished she’d taken Dr. Meggar in the carriage with them so he could use his healing powers on the injured—
—and then what? Leave him to the mercies of Bloddeuwedd? He wants to build a hospital here, in this world. He wants to help the children, who surely don’t deserve all the evils that I’ve seen visited on them—
&n
bsp; She shunted the thoughts aside. This was no time for a philosophical debate about doctors and their obligations.
It was time to run.
Reaching behind her, she found two hands. One was slick with blood so she reached farther, thanking her late mother for all the ballet lessons, all the children’s yoga, and she grabbed the sleeve above it. And then she put her back into it and pulled.
To her surprise she hauled Damon up with her. She tried to heft him farther up on her back, but that didn’t work. And then she even managed a wobbly step forward, and another—
And then Sage was there picking both of them up and they were going into the lobby of the building of the Shi no Shi.
“Everyone, get out! Get out! Bloddeuwedd’s after us and she’ll kill anything in her way!” Elena shouted. It was the strangest thing. She hadn’t meant to shout. Hadn’t formulated the words, except perhaps in the deepest parts of her subconscious. But she did shout them into the already frenzied lobby and she heard the cry taken up by others.
What she didn’t expect was that they would run, not out into the street, but down toward the cells. She ought to have, of course, but she hadn’t. And then she felt herself and Sage and Damon going down, down the way they had last night…
But was it really the right way? Elena clamped one hand over the other and saw, judging by foxlight, that they needed to head off to the right.
“WHAT ARE THOSE CELLS TO THE RIGHT OF US? HOW DO WE GET THERE?” she shouted to the young vampire gentleman next to her.
“That’s Isolation and Mentally Disturbed,” the vampire gentleman shouted back. “Don’t go that way.”
“I have to! Do I need a key?”
“Yes, but—”
“Do you have a key?”
“Yes, but—”
“Give it to me now!”
“I can’t do that,” he wailed in a way that reminded her of Bonnie at her most difficult.
“All right. Sage!”
“Madame?”
“Send Talon back to peck this man’s eyes out. He won’t give me the key to Stefan’s ward!”
